Facebook Graph Search seems to have a lot of potential. With the improved search feature, we'll finally be able to sift through all the user data on Facebook in an intelligent, intuitive way.

For businesses and startups especially, features like Graph Search and Facebook's conversion measurement tool sound promising — has Facebook finally given business owners the toolkit they need to acquire new customers, target ads on a micro level and drive measurable conversions?

The jury's still out, so we asked a panel of successful young entrepreneurs to share how they're using (or plan to use) Facebook's newer features to serve their business goals. Here's what they had to say. Read more...

Think Sony's Vaio laptops are too expensive? The company is challenging that perception with its new Fit and Fit E lines of Windows 8 PCs, aimed at customers who want to "step up" from cheap laptops, but still pay as little as possible.

The Fit line prioritizes design with aluminum casings, while the Fit E is about as thin and light as possible. Both lines have two models: a 14-incher with 1,600 x 900 resolution, and a 15-inch with a full HD (1,920 x 1,080) display

The screens on the Fit include include color-enhancement technology for a better picture when playing games or watching movies, and its ClearAudio+ audio processing can provide a virtual surround-sound experience. Customers can choose between screens with or without touch. Read more...

You may know Viber. It's one of the many messaging apps — including WhatsApp, Line and WeChat — that are challenging wireless carriers and platform owners such as Facebook with free (or borderline free) messaging between its users. And it just got a big upgrade that evolves the service beyond mobile.

Viber 3.0 is launching Tuesday on iOS and Android. But it's also launching on desktop — both PC and Mac — for the first time. Charting a path that's like Skype in reverse, Viber is now spreading to the desktop after conquering mobile.

And according to Viber's own statistics, the word "conquering" is correct. The service now boasts 200 million users, although CEO Talmon Marco told Mashable that about half are "active" users — that is, those who have logged into the service within the last month. Read more...

Amazon and Barnes & Noble have lowered some of their tablet prices for Mother's Day, with savings ranging from $20 to $50.

Barnes & Noble's 7-inch Nook HD can now be had for as low as $149. The 16GB variant of the 9-inch Nook HD+ now costs $179, while the version with twice as much memory costs $209

Amazon quickly followed B&N's example, lowering the price of its 16GB Kindle Fire HD to $179. The 32GB variant of the same device now costs $209. To take advantage of the deal, use the code "FIRE4MOM" at checkout until May 12.

A recent Telework Week report indicated that bring-your-own-device, or BYOD, programs have yet to fully take hold in the federal government, even though many employees are pressing to use their own smartphones and tablets for work. That may soon change: A new analysis predicts more than one-third of organizations will stop providing devices to workers by 2016.

Based on answers to its recent global survey of chief information officers, Gartner predicts that by 2016 38% of organizations will have stopped providing mobile devices to employees, instead allowing employees to choose and use their own devices in the workplace. By 2017, half of employees will be using their own devices for work, the analysis found. Read more...

Father-son photography team Nick and Kurt Gerber traveled across a divided country looking for connections. At a time of polarized politics, they sought to tackle issues that would unite Americans of any persuasion

They decided to focus on veterans from the last decade of foreign wars. The project, Operation Route 66, saw the Gerbers ride almost 2,000 miles on their motorcycles, talking to vets and learning their stories along the way. The historic roadway is itself a connection, a link across the Southwest between California and the team's native Chicago. And their funding method, Kickstarter, connected them directly with supporters of their planned documentary. Read more...

We've seen the virtual reality headset Oculus Rift take a 90-year old grandmother on a charming tour through Tuscany, but the device can also be used for other, much less pleasant experiences

In one very blatant example, users are going through the experience of being decapitated by a guillotine, a device used for executions, most famously in the 18th century during the French Revolution

This Oculus Rift experience, created during the Exile Game Jam by Erkki Trummal, André Berlemont and Morten Brunbjerg, is dubbed "Disunion - The guillotine simulator". It's simple — users put their head into the virtual guillotine, looking up as the virtual blade drops down on their necks. Read more...

Shows on offer include hits like "Family Guy," "Glee," "Modern Family," "Community," "The Vampire Diaries" and others. Ad-free kids shows are also available, including "SpongeBob SquarePants," "iCarly," "Caillou" and others. And, if you want to get rid of (most) ads, you can get a limited advertising version of the app for $7.99 a month

The app offers daily feed of "Trending Now" clips, adding videos to queue for instant access, search, and the ability to resume watching where you left off on supported devices. WP8 device owners will be happy to learn that the app also offers Live Tile updates on hottest shows Read more...

Rather than reaching behind a nightstand to plug in your tablet or climb down from a bunk bed to plug in your smartphone, the nuplug is like a portable power strip that can clamp onto various surfaces (e.g. table leg, workbench, etc.).

According to its Kickstarter page, nuplug includes a surge-protected extension cord that's 10 feet long, as well as two AC power outlets and two USB ports on its adjustable clamp. Read more...

The moon will block the sun in a potentially spectacular solar eclipse this week — a celestial event that will transform the sun into a cosmic "ring of fire" in the daytime sky

The ring-shaped solar eclipse, known as an annular eclipse, will occur Thursday and Friday (May 9 and 10) Eastern time. Weather permitting, the eclipse will be visible in certain parts of Australia and the Southern Pacific Ocean, where the local time will be Friday.

"Solar eclipses can be inspirational to students and others, so it is interesting to have everyone view the eclipse, but only safe methods of viewing should be used," Jay Pasachoff, an astronomer at Williams College and chair of the International Astronomical Union's working group on eclipses, said in a statement Read more...

Windows Blue is real, and it's coming before the end of the year. Windows marketing chief Tami Reller confirmed to Mashable that the next major update to Windows 8 is codenamed "Blue" and that it would ship by the 2013 holiday season.

"Blue" is actually an internal Microsoft codename for the update, and the final product will have a different name, although Reller didn't say what it would be. With Blue, Reller said, Microsoft has three main pillars:

Evolving Windows 8 for touch

Addressing customer feedback

Supporting new form factors, specifically 7- and 8-inch screen sizes

That last point is probably the most significant, since up till now manufacturers faced big technical hurdles in creating small-screen Windows 8 devices. It also means Windows tablets — such as the rumored Acer Iconia W3 — will soon be able compete directly with products such as the Kindle Fire HD and iPad mini. Read more...

The PC market is continuing to drive off a cliff, but at least now more passengers are running Windows 8Microsoft says it's sold 100 million licenses for Windows 8 so far, up from 60 million in January. At the same time, the Windows Store has hit 60,000 apps.

As for how many of those licenses represent PCs that are actually being used, it's hard to say. The 100 million includes upgrades as well as PC sales. However, the vast majority of the 40 million licenses sold since January are new PCs, says Tami Reller, Microsoft's vice president of Windows marketing.

"Upgrade season was pretty much over in January once all the offers expired," Reller told Mashable. "So pretty much all of the growth from 60 to 100 [million] is new PCs." Read more...

If you spend any time on Instagram, you might already know this sassy Jack Russell terrier with a flair for costumes. Ginny — or ginny_jrt, as she's known on Instagram — has more than 186,000 followers who heart every new look the 6-year-old rescue pooch sports in her snapshots.

Ginny's best human friend, Chelsea England, told Mashable that the Instagram-famous dog has a relaxed attitude about her dress up sessions

"Strangely enough, she seems to have no problems with it," England said. "I'm not sure if that's because she's a bit lazy though, but 99% of the time she smiles and wags her tail. 1% of the time she just walks off before I can take a photo of her and that way I know never to try and dress her in that particular item again." Read more...

A new budget version of the iPhone is set to launch this year, according to an ETrade Supply source.

The cell-phone parts supplier has been correct about a number of Apple rumors before, and most recently obtained parts of the iPhone 5 prior to its release.

Beyond the budget handset's existence, however, ETrade’s sources weren’t able to share any more details.

Based on previous rumors, the budget iPhone is expected to look like a cross between the iPhone 5, the latest iPod touch and the iPod classic. In terms of materials used, some reports suggest the phone will be made mostly from plastic — making it cheaper to manufacture, but also less durable. Read more...

The NBA is the top sports league on YouTube, largely thanks a constant procession of dunk and highlight montages. But NBA players don't just have moves on the court — it seems many of them also love to dance. With that in mind, the league posted this funny video to YouTube on Monday

Behold: the best dance moves of the 2012-2013 regular season. From Utah's Enes Kanter busting out The Worm, to some Gangnam Style from Steve Nash, it's all here. Check the video out for yourself above, then let us know who breaks it down best in the comments below Read more...

Monday marks the three-year anniversary of the 2010 Flash Crash, when the U.S. stock market lost 1,000 points in a matter of minutes before recovering most of these loses a few minutes later.

The crash occurred when high-frequency trading algorithms got into a vicious, high-speed selling spiral, wiping out billions of dollars of value before anyone knew what was happening. Some observers argue that a trading system dominated by machines rather than human beings could be increasingly prone to such calamitous crashes in future.

Perhaps algorithms can also help make the financial system more secure, though. Read more...

For this week's Music Monday, we've compiled a playlist of songs that were featured in lit-flicks such as The Great Gatsby. What's your favorite song from a book that's been brought to the silver screen? Let us know in the comments below, or send us a song on Spotify, and we'll add it to our list. Read more...

Go ahead. Fill in the blank. Chances are, you've uttered that sentence once or twice. You've probably even been the "blank" at one point or another. Don't sweat it, though — it happens to everyone. (We're looking at you, Phil Tippett.)

1

The San Francisco Giants have one of Major League Baseball's coolest ballparks and here's one reason why: McCovey Cove. That's a small inlet beyond the right field fence where dozens of kayakers and boaters gather to hang out, have parties and, if they're lucky, even snag a homerun ball during games

For last night's Sunday Night Baseball tilt between the Giants and Dodgers, ESPN decided to reward all those loyal, sea-faring and ticketless fans. How? By equipping pro kayaker London Van Der Kamp with a whole bunch of hot dogs that he paddled around and gave out for free

NASA recently launched a trio of satellites that could possibly be the cheapest satellites ever flown in space. The satellites were something you probably carry or are holding right now: smartphones.

The NASA mission, dubbed "PhoneSat," launched three beefed up Google-HTC Nexus One smartphones (nicknamed "Alexander," "Graham" and "Bell") into space on April 21. The idea was to figure out whether consumer-grade smartphones like these can be used as the main flight avionics for a satellite in space, as explained in the video above.

The phones snapped photos hundreds of miles above the Earth's surface. That photo information was then sent in "packets" via a ham radio frequency. Back on Earth, hundreds of amateur ham radio operators helped with decoding the information from the satellites. With that assistance, NASA was able to reconstruct images of the Earth (see below image from PhoneSat-2, "Graham"). Read more...

Ascribing a consistent political agenda to the hacktivist collective Anonymous is almost impossible. Anyone can claim the "Anonymous" moniker and use it for good or evil, provided that his or her work is subversive.

This time, a number of hacktivists from around the world, some of them taking on the Anonymous label, have set their sights on the United States' most powerful institutions in an event dubbed "OpUSA."

Anonymous and various Islamist groups claim that they will take down nine U.S. government websites on May 7, including those of the Pentagon, the National Security Agency, the FBI and the White House, along with over 130 bank websites, such as those belonging to Bank of America, Capital One and TD Bank. Read more...

"We gotta ask you about all these tablets and PCs," Squawk Box co-anchor Joe Kernen said to Microsoft chairman Bill Gates Monday morning. "What's the world going to look like and how does the cloud factor into what Microsoft will do in the future?"

Gates, sitting in a hangar in Omaha, Neb., next to his mentor Warren Buffett, called the cloud a huge opportunity to allow computer innovation that has up until now never been available. Gates then jumped headlong into his hardware plan, drumming up some positive PR for the company he co-founded back in 1975. (The full interview is available here.) Read more...

Adobe's decision to discontinue the boxed version of Creative Suite and move to a subscription software-based model (also known as the Creative Cloud) stunned many customers, but considering recent moves, like the acquisition and integration of Behance, the introduction of a cloud subscription option and Adobe’s desire to support transmedia activities, none of this should come as a surprise. Even so, customer shock, anger and confusion are well in evidence in the hundreds of comments piling up under Mashable's post on the announcement.

With that in mind, Mashable got on the phone with Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen to dispel at least some of the myth and rumor surrounding Adobe Creative Cloud. Read more...

Ever wonder what it's like to win the Kentucky Derby? This new video produced by the digital sports info company Trakus gives us a little taste. A virtual recreation of Orb's route in the Saturday race shows the winning horse's exact path from an over-the-shoulder perspective behind jockey Joel Rosario

The clip was published to the Kentucky Derby's official YouTube channel on Monday and provides a very cool way to experience what many consider the most exciting two minutes in sports. It's pretty cutting edge — that is, until jockeys become outfitted with Google Glass one day Read more...

Only Mark Zuckerberg could throw a billion-dollar deal on ice to sit down with his friends and watch Game of Thrones.

We're at least a few years away from calling the 28-year-old Facebook CEO an eccentric billionaire (because a) he's not old; and b) he hasn't thrown stacks of benjamins from a hot air balloon just yet), but this is just one of the few details about the Facebook-Instagram deal that shook up the Web last year.

Writing for Vanity Fair, Kara Swisher has a comprehensive look at how the deal went down. Instagram's cofounders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger opted to sell to Facebook—rather than take a competing offer from Twitter—because, as Systrom told Krieger, “I really like Mark, and I really like his company. And I really like what Facebook is trying to achieve.” Read more...

Walt Disney Company has just tapped Electronic Arts to exclusively produce future Star Wars video games for "mobile, social, tablet and online," although Disney will retain some game creation rights within those categories.

Disney and EA announced the multi-year licensing deal Monday — a month after Disney and LucasFilm shuttered long-time Star Wars game publisher LucasArts

"Every developer dreams of creating games for the Star Wars universe," Frank Gibeau, president of EA Labels, said in a statement. "Three of our top studios will fulfill that dream, crafting epic adventures for Star Wars fans. Read more...

Comedian Rob Delaney — who is among Twitter's most popular, funny and ribald comedic tweeters — will take over the official Major League Baseball account for several hours Tuesday afternoon

Delaney's incisive wit and bon mots have gained him more than 838,000 Twitter followers as well as press coverage across the web. But the Massachusetts native is also a lifelong baseball fan who grew up rooting for the Boston Red Sox, so the MLB takeover makes sense. It'll happen from 12 to 7 p.m. EDT

So what will Delaney tweet from the MLB account? We'll have to wait and see.

"He’s the kind of guy who will take over the account and run with it," says Arturo Pardavila III, MLB's director of social media content. "Plenty of fastballs — with some curveballs mixed in. Also, the man can sing. He nailed the national anthem at Dodger Stadium a few weeks ago. Maybe he’ll even do a singing Vine. Who knows? The floor is his." Read more...

He lives on the International Space Station, but astronaut Chris Hadfield still has to keep Earth time. However, he can't rely on just any watch. With zero gravity and pressurized cabins, an astronaut's timepiece has to be engineered for out-of-this-world conditions.

Hadfield wears an Omega Speedmaster, which is certified for the thermal vacuum of a spacewalk. However, Hadfield isn't necessarily a trendsetter when it comes to his wristwatch. The Speedmaster has its own history in orbit: It was the first watch worn on the moon.

In 1962, NASA purchased samples of commercially sold wristwatches to test for space missions, and the agency went with Omega's model. NASA supplied each of the Apollo astronauts with a standard-issue Omega Speedmaster Professional manual-wind wristwatch, along with a Velcro strap Read more...